Louisville

Louisville coach Rick Pitino, one of the winningest coaches in NCAA history who has won 770 games and two national championships and made seven Final Four appearances while also weathering multiple scandals, was put on unpaid leave Wednesday, after he was accused of secretly partnering with Adidas to funnel nearly $100,000 to the family of an elite prospect.

In response, Pitino asked for his release, which would entail a full contract buyout, ringing it at over $40 million dollars. His first purchase? The Playboy Mansion.

“I’ve wanted to buy the mansion for as long as I can remember, that grotto is a dream,” said Pitino. “Hugh Hefner was a legend, and a personal idol. He was smart, business savvy, and could – and did – have every girl he ever wanted. His death is tragic, but thankfully, his death has granted me my ultimate wish…to become the new owner of his Playboy Mansion.”

In 2015, a self-proclaimed escort named Katina Powell claimed in a tell-all book that she had been part of over 20 parties set up by the school for basketball players. The parties would bring in prostitutes to engage in sex acts with recruits to entice them to attend the college. At the time, Pitino had said he had “no knowledge” of the parties, but his most recent purchase may indicate otherwise, at least in the eyes of detractors.

“No, I definitely didn’t know of any sex parties at the school, or for players,” said Pitino. “All I know is what I heard afterwards. I wasn’t even invited, which is a total drag. I will tell you that I know of a lot of upcoming sex parties, you can bet on that. I won’t say when, but everyone absolutely knows where.”

Pitino has been the head coach in Louisville for almost 2 decades, but says that being put on leave might be the best thing that ever happened to him.

“I was upset at first, but in retrospect, sports aren’t forever. They’re not tangible, they’re nothing. They’re just in the now,” said Pitino. “You know what’s forever? The Playboy Mansion. That’s forever. It’s legendary. I can’t wait to move in and try it out…if you know what I mean.”

The sale is expected to go through within the next few weeks, as soon as Pitino’s contract payment is processed.

Jason Hargrove, 28, of Louisville, Kentucky has been charged in the shooting death of his best friend, 29-year-old Michael Jenkins, also of Louisville, after the two got into an argument over which school has the superior men’s college basketball program, the University of Kentucky or the University of Louisville.

Apparently the shooting was not over the actual teams, though, but over annoyance at Jenkins’ use of bad grammar during their Facebook chat.

According to Michelle Baker, girlfriend of the accused Hargrove, the argument started when Hargrove, a Louisville Cardinals sports fan, and Jenkins, a loyal University of Kentucky fan, began chatting on Facebook about which of the two teams would win the NCAA men’s basketball tournament this season.

Baker told Louisville Metro Police Department detectives that the conversation had been going on for over an hour, when Hargrove abruptly smashed a full bottle of beer over his computer, and began yelling wildly, which startled her while in another room. Baker says when she entered the room to ask what was wrong, Hargrove was ‘going wild.’

“Jason said to me, [Jenkins] is a stupid, worthless, piece of shit UK fan! I’m sick of reading his nonsensical dribble! I don’t even know how we have been friends for so long! When a guy doesn’t even know the difference between their, there, and they’re, then that illiterate son of a bitch should be killed!” Baker said in her statement to police.

According to a LMPD spokesperson, the two began to make threats against one another, at which point Hargrove loaded his gun and walked next door, where Jenkins lived, and shot him at a point-blank range four times. He then took a red Sharpie marker and wrote, ‘Go Cards!’ on the dying mans forehead. No one else was in Jenkins’ trailer at the time.

Both University of Kentucky head coach, John Calipari, and University of Louisville coach, Rick Pitino, were asked about the incident, and both coaches commented on how the fans take the rivalry way too seriously.

“Coaching college basketball is my career, it is all I know and I can still sleep at night knowing it is just a game,” Pitino said. “College basketball fans in the state of Kentucky get ridiculous. I wish I could say this shocks me but it absolutely does not. Things like this are another reason I think social media is senseless – the world is full of idiots, they say things they don’t mean or have any knowledge about, and besides that, you can’t believe anything you read on the internet.”

“The fans around here are crazy. I’m sure the guy will claim temporary insanity, and it will probably hold up in court because people in this state are all insane during basketball season,” Calipari said. “That’s the reason why our program puts so much effort into funding the basketball program, and we go after the best players money can buy. Our lives may very well depend on it.”

In a surprisingly candid recent interview, Academy Award winning actress Jennifer Lawrence, best known for her role as Katniss Everdeen in the stupidly successful Hunger Games movie series, was asked about her recent break-up with Coldplay frontman Chris Martin – a question which turned the beautiful, charismatic, and young star’s face bright, blushing red.

“Chris and I had a very fun time together – we traveled, went to amusement parks, we did the things fun couples are supposed to do,” Lawrence said. “I never was a big fan of his band Coldplay, but my God, who is, right? Anyway, we met, and he is a sweet guy. A little too sweet really, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

So why did such a wonderful, fun, sweet relationship come to an end? Well, despite what sounds like a picture-perfect romance, Lawrence said that there were some shortcomings in the relationship.

“Well…he didn’t quite measure up…to certain aspects as previous boyfriends, I guess you could say,” said Lawrence. The young mega-star then composed herself, took a deep breath, and said, “Chris and I didn’t work out, because he just couldn’t fulfill my needs,if you know what I mean. Actually, let me re-phrase that. Chris literally couldn’t fill my needs. At first it was kind of cute, and it didn’t bother me at all. I’m not some materialistic type chick, I never was. But eventually, I just didn’t feel like he was the right fit for me, or that maybe I was the right fit for him and, in the end, that had a lot to do with it.”

Despite the break-up, Lawrence says that she and Martin remain good friends.

“The relationship wasn’t going to be growing any time soon. In fact, I think it may have stopped growing right before puberty. But despite that, Chris and I are still happy we met, because as I said, he’s a great guy. We’re just better as friends than lovers, as is often the case these days,” said Lawrence. “He really is a wonderful human being, but I mean, you don’t sell a bajillion records if you’re not trying to overcompensating for something. Which is why there’s no way I’ll ever date Chad Kroger from Nickelback.”

Lawrence was ranked the #1 sexiest woman in the world on the FHM ‘100 Sexiest Women In the World’ list. Martin’s ex-wife, Gwyneth Paltrow, refused to comment.

Haunted attraction Industrial Terrorplex, located in Jeffersonville, Indiana (directly across the Ohio River from downtown Louisville, Kentucky) will hold a public wake for a homeless man, who died from injuries sustained after being struck by car, as part of their show until Halloween night.

Carl “Kitty Kat” Heywood, 63, a homeless man hospitalized after being struck by an automobile on September 28th, told his friend, Nik Houpt, who had arrived at Clark Memorial Hospital on October 5thto check on his condition, just hours before his passing, that if he didn’t make it he wanted Houpt and his “other freak friends” to take him to “the haunted house” and let him “rest and say goodbye.”

Houpt told Empire News in an on-site interview at the nationally known haunt Industrial Terrorplex that he did not know what to make of the request, and just nodded his head and told Heywood that he would be fine and to get some rest. “He was in pretty bad shape and I think he knew. I really didn’t realize what he was asking at the time or how meaningful it was to him ya know?” Houpt explained.

As Houpt exited the Jeffersonville hospital he stopped, turned around, and re-entered the building to leave his telephone number at the information desk with instructions to have someone call him if Mr. Heywood’s condition were to change. “About three hours later the hospital called and explained to me that ‘Kitty Kat’ had died peacefully in his sleep,” Houpt said. “My heart just kinda dropped at that point and I kept replaying what he had said over and over in my head. I went and told Terry Campbell, the owner and operator of Industrial Terrorplex, what Kitty Kat had said. I don’t think he knew how to respond to that himself.”

Campbell, who has owned and operated the large, award-winning haunted attraction for several years, said that the more he thought about it, the more he realized what needed to be done. “I knew Kitty Kat didn’t have family, and there would be no service or anything, and I kept thinking about how he always went to extremes to make us laugh – telling tall-tales as if they were fact. He didn’t have anything but the clothes on his back, yet he found a way to make others laugh,” Campbell said.

Campbell would then set into action an unimaginable, unprecedented plan to hold a wake inside the over-the-top haunted attraction during hours of production, which customers would most certainly shockingly stumble upon.

“My really good friend Buffy Marie, who has dedicated a lot of time and involvement into the haunt, also happens to be a funeral director and mortician. I asked her if we could pull this thing off, and that money would not be an issue. We got it all figured out, and realized we could preserve him long enough to keep him laid out until Halloween. So we set up a room with a constant controlled temperature and steady humidity levels, rented a casket, bought him a nice suit, and there he lies. He was a troubled man, but possessed a really good soul. It feels good to know we are here for him,” Campbell expressed adamantly.

Thursday, October 9th at 8:00 pm, Industrial Terrorplex will open its doors to the always excited line waiting in adrenaline-laden anxiety to find out to what extreme the outlandish haunt has in store for them this year. It is anticipated that until word gets out of the wake, the gesture will shock customers.

“It is a risky move, but in the haunted house business we take risks every single year, and this time it is definitely worth it. Once customers enter the room, a greeter will give groups a brief history of Kitty Kat and how he loved hanging out around us all year as we re-designed and rebuilt our haunts, and explain what his body is doing there. It is possibly the first ever wake held in a haunted house,” Campbell said.

Industrial Terrorplex is open Thursdays – Sundays from now until Halloween. For hours and other information visit www.industrialterrorplex.com.

University of Kentucky Athletic Director Mitch Barnhart announced in a press conference just hours ago that the University will suspend funding for its football program and all women’s sports for the 2015-2016 season.

The struggling football program has not won an SEC conference championship since 1976, and even then they tied with Georgia making them c0-champions. “We are just not relevant in football in the SEC, moving to a different conference is out of the question. This is basketball country, and for that, we need all the money we can get our hands on,” Barnhart said earlier today. “Operating these sports, paying for the scholarships, feeding the student athletes, making travel arrangements – it all costs us more money than we bring in. This is not a decision we have made lightly, but it has been decided the money, time, and effort would be more suitably spent funding men’s basketball and building a new basketball arena.”

U of K officials had become infuriated with the state’s lack of help in funding development for a new basketball arena. After the state chipped in and helped their long time rival, the University of Louisville, build one of the countries most up-to-date, state of the art basketball arenas, The KFC YUM! Center in downtown Louisville, they figured it was their time. They waited and waited, but the help never came.

“This is a basketball state, and the University of Kentucky is the premier basketball program in all of basketball, yet the state helps our in-state rival instead of us… it’s like a punch in the face. Therefore we have been forced to discontinue nearly all other sport programs,” Barnhart said.

When asked how long the suspension of the programs will go on, Barnhart said that they intend to re-instate some of the programs for the 2016-2017 seasons but definitely no earlier than that. “If everything goes as planned, we will gather all the resources we need to fund a new arena and take care of our men’s basketball team and their families during that year. And then hopefully we can start bringing the suspended programs back into business.”

Kentucky fans do not seem too distraught by the shocking decision. Edgar Williams of Shepherdsville, Kentucky, who refers to himself as a ‘lifelong U of K fan’ said he was glad they were ditching the girls.

“Hell I don’t give a damn about those other sports anyways. We can’t play football to save our damn lives, and nobody gives a damn about girls sports, I mean who goes to watch a bunch of girls play games? Perverts that’s who. Fine by me. This is basketball country,” Williams said.

The University of Kentucky is well-known for its colorful, wild, and wacky basketball fans. In a recent survey taken by a national media outlet, they were ranked the 2nd most obnoxious fans in the country.

Basketball coach John Calipari was asked about the decision to suspend funding for other sports, and he said he didn’t like it but his team needs to be taken care of. “It’s a cruel world, my kids play their hearts out, they deserve to play in a state of the art arena like the one in Louisville. We are tired of being looked at as the inferior program in the state while we are actually the best basketball program in history. So what, that other Kentucky school is good in all sports. This is a basketball state, don’t they know that?” Calipari said with a quirky smile.

Once a year, volunteers who live near and along the great Ohio River participate in an event dubbed “The Annual Ohio River Sweep,” which extends the entire length of the massive waterway, from Pittsburgh, PA to Cairo, Illinois. Organizers said when the River Sweep started 25 years ago, finding items like washing machines, cars, and sunken fishing vessels was common.

“We’re not finding any of the large objects anymore, but we are finding what I call lots of ‘convenience items.’ A lot of the pop bottles, a lot of the plastic bags. So there is still a lot of work to be done on the Ohio River,” said River Sweep coordinator Lisa Cochran.

This year the great sweep fell on June 21. It was business as usual for volunteers from state to state, that is, except for one man. Robert Bradbury was born, raised and has lived his entire life in the thriving city of Louisville, Kentucky. Home of boxing great and humanitarian Muhammad Ali. What he found during the Sweep is most definitely one of the more mysterious and infamous pieces of sports hardware in American history.

“I saw something round and fairly large – well, bigger than any coin I know of, sticking out of the mud. I went to retrieve it and I realized it was a medallion of some kind,” Bradbury said. “As a joke, I walked over to my wife Pattie and told her ‘Hey I found Ali’s gold medal that he threw off the Second Street bridge in 1960!’ We both laughed as I tried to get it clean enough to make out what the design was on the thing.”

It was when he started to make out a figure on the medallion that Robert started to wonder what it really was.

“I finally rubbed the thing off enough so that I could see an image on the medallion, it almost looked to me like some ancient Roman God or something, then it clicked, I looked at my wife and said, ‘Oh dear Lord, the 1960 Olympics were in Rome!’ The thing totally looked Roman to me so I started to get excited. She told me to calm down because most medallions have that kind of design on them.”

It turns out that his wife was wrong, and there was a definite reason to get excited.

After about a week of searching for an appraiser, they located an Olympic Medal collector and expert living in Indianapolis, Indiana. So they made the two-and-a-half hour drive to meet Wade Somerville, who has been collecting Olympic Medals for fifteen years. Somerville used a special cleaning solution designed specifically for fragile, valuable precious metals.

“Not five minutes went by before he lit up like a Christmas tree, turned and said to us ‘What you have here, is an authentic 1960 Olympic Gold Medal. This thing is the real deal.'” The three of them were speechless. They all knew the old story.

Ali, then named Cassius Clay, cherished his gold medal from the 1960 Olympics so much that he wore it all the time, even while sleeping. Then one day, sickened by a horrific bout of racism he encountered that evening, the 18-year-old light- heavyweight boxing champion stood on the Second Street Bridge and threw the medal into the Ohio River.

He never revealed the story until a documentary was made about him in 1975, and he explained what happened. For various reasons, however, people seemed to want to believe he was making the story up to get a rise out of his fans and the Olympic committee, just being dramatic as he always was. The incident took place in the fall of 1960. Fast-forward fifty-four years. June 21, 2014, Robert Bradbury pulls an authentic 1960 Olympic Gold Medal from the muddy banks of the Ohio River.

“There is no doubt in my mind that this is the very gold medal Cassius Clay threw off that bridge. It is the most amazing thing I could possibly see with my own eyes!” said Somerville.

“I was like, ‘Oh Lord, now what do we do?'” Bradbury revealed. “We decided the only right thing to do was somehow contact the Ali family, so we went to the Muhammad Ali Center and swiftly handed it over to the curator. They were extremely excited as you could imagine and treated us like royalty.”

About a week went by when the Bradbury’s received a phone call from Chief Curator Sarah Lynn Jeffcoat, she asked the couple to meet them down at the Center as soon as possible. When they finally arrived, they were amazed by what was waiting for them. A check, written by the Ali family for the sum of $200,000.

“We both just burst into tears,” said Bradbury. “It is such an amazing thing to be actually now be a part of this amazing human-being’s story. We are linked with him for eternity, and they could not have been more thankful and appreciative. They have reached out and changed our lives forever, we are so grateful!”